13. BEAT - Ginsberg
Towards a free and open society
In this Blog . . .we focus on Allen Ginsberg1. How to Get Famous - Quickly. The first reading of the poem howl was a sure way to get some attention and created the notorious and much celebrated reputation Ginsberg enjoyed from this time on.
2. "I'm with you in Rockland" Ginsberg and Carl Solomon - Ginsberg was not really criminally minded, but he got caught in a theft when he hid stolen goods in his flat. What happened next was a major influence in his future career.
3. Surrealism and Antonin Artaud - There were several European influences on the beat writers, the influence of surrealism was imported to Ginsberg through Solomon.
4. The Theatre of Cruelty - Still with Artaud we learn about his attempt to involve the audience in the actual performance of his theatre productions.
5. The Staff of St Patrick - A truly bizarre chapter from the life of Artaud.
6. The Legacy of Artaud - A chain of connections that lead onwards to Ginsberg's Howl.
8. Ginsberg's Visions - Another fascinating connection to the old world is the strange stories of Ginsberg's vision and it's connection to William Blake.
9. Blake's Visions - We explore a little more in depth Blakes original story as recorded by his friend John Varley.
9. Ginsberg and Moloch - Ginsberg described his encounter as having taken place without the use of hallucinogenics.
10. If Your going to San Francisco - We follow Ginsberg to California after visiting Cuba and Mexico.
Introduction
No-one could be more unsuited for middle class 1950's American suburbia than Allen Ginsberg. Son of Louis Ginsberg, a schoolteacher and sometime poet , and Naomi Levy, a Russian emigree and fervent Marxist.
Ginsberg's first unforgivable sin was being born Jewish, the second is his connection to Communism, and thirdly to crown it all, he was a homosexual.
1. How to Get Famous - Quickly
It was Ginsberg's directness, first seen in his book 'Howl' they really got people riled up, and his frank descriptions of casual sex not to mention homosexual sex got him indicted in an obscenity trial. This of course made him notorious but also very famous. Americans certainly got shocked out of their comfort zones and were polarized between the upholders of the traditional middle class suburban way of doing things and the more liberal minded who welcomed a move towards openness and free enquiry.
Ginsberg's poetic uttering led to an important argument on the First Amendment. As we all all know the first amendment, protects freedom of speech but with certain limitations, which are constantly shifting as attitudes and ideas change over time. Ginsberg's publisher was charged with publishing pornography, but the Judge was not persuaded since the overall purpose of the publication was about social issues and the sexual content was basically incidental and not the main theme. This set a new precedent and would certainly pave the way for more challenging publications which were sure to follow.
Ginsberg also arrived in New York in 1944 with a scholarship at Columbia University. Whilst he learned much there, it was the people he met in New York who became the main influence on his decision to become a poet. As a freshman he met undergraduate Lucien Carr, who introduced him to William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, the legendary New York circle which included Herbert Huncke, John Holmes, and another drifter Neil Cassidy with whom Ginsberg became totally infatuated Kerouac described their relationship the opening chapter of his novel On the Road (1957).
2. "I'm with you in Rockland" Ginsberg and Carl Solomon
In 1949 Ginsberg was arrested as an accessory to crimes carried out by Herbert Huncke and his friends, who had stored stolen goods in Ginsberg's apartment.
As an alternative to a jail sentence, Ginsberg's professors Van Doren and Trilling arranged with the Columbia dean for a plea of psychological disability, on condition that Ginsberg was admitted to the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute.
Spending eight months in the mental institution, Ginsberg became close friends with a young writer named Carl Solomon. Although he dedicated his famous poem "Howl" to Solomon it was really his own mother's tragic descent into mental illness and her incarceration at the same mental clinic, with her subsequent lobotomy, which weighed heavily on his mind.
3. Surrealism and Antonin Artaud
Solomon provided Ginsberg with an important link to the European Art movement, Surrealism, which became another important influence to Ginsberg's methodology in his writing.
Solomon was doing a stint in the United States Maritime Service in 1944 and in his travels to Europe he encountered the surrealist performance artist Antonin Artaud. The performances of the surrealists made a lasting impression on him, and this was certainly not lost on Ginsberg who makes reference to Solomon and his Dadaist exploits in "Howl", which he dedicated to Solomon.
Antonin Artaud was a truly fascinating character, no stranger to institutions, he contracted meningitis as a child and managed to survive, but in the process became addicted to laudanum a tincture drug made from opium that was prescribed by his doctor. His life was subsequently punctuated by mental instability.
In 1920, he moved to Paris intending to pursue a career as a writer, but he became interested in the avant-garde theatre scene and began training and performing with directors. He had a great interest in cinema and wrote the scenario for an early surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928).
4. The Theatre of Cruelty
This film was an influence on surrealists Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, who in 1929 made the iconic "Un Chien Andalou", with its infamous eyeball-slicing scene. He was a gifted playwright and after becoming embroiled in the Dada and surrealist experiments, he became a key figure of the European avant garde, known today as the creator of "Theatre of Cruelty."
The Theatre of Cruelty is both a philosophy and a discipline. Artaud wanted to disrupt the relationship between audience and performer. The ‘cruelty’ in Artaud’s thesis was sensory, it exists in the work’s capacity to shock and confront the audience, to go beyond words and connect with the emotions: to wake up the nerves and the heart. He believed gesture and movement to be more powerful than text. Sound and lighting could also be used as tools of sensory disruption. The audience, he argued, should be placed at the centre of a piece of performance. Theatre should be an act of ‘organised anarchy'.
Dr. Ferdière and Antonin Artaud at the Asylum.
1. How to Get Famous - Quickly
It was Ginsberg's directness, first seen in his book 'Howl' they really got people riled up, and his frank descriptions of casual sex not to mention homosexual sex got him indicted in an obscenity trial. This of course made him notorious but also very famous. Americans certainly got shocked out of their comfort zones and were polarized between the upholders of the traditional middle class suburban way of doing things and the more liberal minded who welcomed a move towards openness and free enquiry.
2. "I'm with you in Rockland" Ginsberg and Carl Solomon
As an alternative to a jail sentence, Ginsberg's professors Van Doren and Trilling arranged with the Columbia dean for a plea of psychological disability, on condition that Ginsberg was admitted to the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute.
Spending eight months in the mental institution, Ginsberg became close friends with a young writer named Carl Solomon. Although he dedicated his famous poem "Howl" to Solomon it was really his own mother's tragic descent into mental illness and her incarceration at the same mental clinic, with her subsequent lobotomy, which weighed heavily on his mind.
Solomon provided Ginsberg with an important link to the European Art movement, Surrealism, which became another important influence to Ginsberg's methodology in his writing.
Solomon was doing a stint in the United States Maritime Service in 1944 and in his travels to Europe he encountered the surrealist performance artist Antonin Artaud. The performances of the surrealists made a lasting impression on him, and this was certainly not lost on Ginsberg who makes reference to Solomon and his Dadaist exploits in "Howl", which he dedicated to Solomon.
Antonin Artaud was a truly fascinating character, no stranger to institutions, he contracted meningitis as a child and managed to survive, but in the process became addicted to laudanum a tincture drug made from opium that was prescribed by his doctor. His life was subsequently punctuated by mental instability.
In 1920, he moved to Paris intending to pursue a career as a writer, but he became interested in the avant-garde theatre scene and began training and performing with directors. He had a great interest in cinema and wrote the scenario for an early surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928).
4. The Theatre of Cruelty
This film was an influence on surrealists Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, who in 1929 made the iconic "Un Chien Andalou", with its infamous eyeball-slicing scene. He was a gifted playwright and after becoming embroiled in the Dada and surrealist experiments, he became a key figure of the European avant garde, known today as the creator of "Theatre of Cruelty."
The Theatre of Cruelty is both a philosophy and a discipline. Artaud wanted to disrupt the relationship between audience and performer. The ‘cruelty’ in Artaud’s thesis was sensory, it exists in the work’s capacity to shock and confront the audience, to go beyond words and connect with the emotions: to wake up the nerves and the heart. He believed gesture and movement to be more powerful than text. Sound and lighting could also be used as tools of sensory disruption. The audience, he argued, should be placed at the centre of a piece of performance. Theatre should be an act of ‘organised anarchy'.
|
| Dr. Ferdière and Antonin Artaud at the Asylum. |
5. The Staff of St Patrick
A most bizarre story happened in 1937, Artaud had been given a wooden staff and somehow became convinced it originally belonged to St Patrick of Ireland and he felt compelled to go there and return it. Now it must be added that the the previous year he had travelled to the Tarahumaara Indians in Mexico where he had taken part in a sacred Aztec peyote ritual and he was to suffer terrifying moments of hallucinations and overwhelming lucidity on his return to Paris.
In Ireland he spent most of his trip in a hotel room he was unable to pay for. He then went to stay at Milltown House, a Jesuit community where he eventually had to be forcibly removed. He was then deported after a brief stay in prison. On his return trip by ship, Artaud believed he felt threatened by two crew members and attacked them, after which he was restrained by and put in a straitjacket. Once back in France he was committed to the lunatic asylum of Sainte Anne and would remain an inmate of successive institutions until 1946.
He last work was "Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu" [To Have Done With the Judgment of God]" which was recorded for radio in 1947. It was scheduled to be broadcast, but was shelved after objections to its anti-American, and anti-christian pronouncements, but also because of its random noises made with xylophonic sounds mixed with various percussion instruments.
5. The Staff of St Patrick
A most bizarre story happened in 1937, Artaud had been given a wooden staff and somehow became convinced it originally belonged to St Patrick of Ireland and he felt compelled to go there and return it. Now it must be added that the the previous year he had travelled to the Tarahumaara Indians in Mexico where he had taken part in a sacred Aztec peyote ritual and he was to suffer terrifying moments of hallucinations and overwhelming lucidity on his return to Paris.
In Ireland he spent most of his trip in a hotel room he was unable to pay for. He then went to stay at Milltown House, a Jesuit community where he eventually had to be forcibly removed. He was then deported after a brief stay in prison. On his return trip by ship, Artaud believed he felt threatened by two crew members and attacked them, after which he was restrained by and put in a straitjacket. Once back in France he was committed to the lunatic asylum of Sainte Anne and would remain an inmate of successive institutions until 1946.
6. The Legacy of Artaud
His work proved to be a significant influence on the Theater of the Absurd, particularly the works of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett, and not least of all Allen Ginsberg claimed his introduction to Artaud, specifically "To Have Done with the Judgement of god", by Carl Solomon had a tremendous influence on his most famous poem "Howl".In the first section of Howl, immortalizes a few of Solomon's personal exploits, such as the line, "
...who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy."
What must have really tickled Ginsberg's imagination, Solomon's descriptions of riotous Dada events in which the public who came to watch were deliberately provoked until they reacted, sometimes violently. The more chaotic the whole event became, the more successful and Dadaist it was deemed.
Here's a Quote which describes the Utopian ideology of the Beat movement which can be taken back to the Dadaist belief that History had to be destroyed and a complete new beginning to civilization was needed . . .from Solomon's "More Mishaps", p. 9
Most poetry today is either boring, incomprehensible or both. I prefer poetry which is attempting to make some sort of philosophical point. It must be backed up by a theory, or illustrate a theory to really interest me. If it lacks a hard core of ideas, then it is merely words. The reason, I feel why poetry is made to submit to psychiatry today (and philosophy as well) is that this science offers theories and ideas while poetry (since surrealism) does not. Poets turn more and more to theories (way in or way out) of mental health since psychiatry now seems the queen of intellectual disciplines. Ours has really become a world without poetry and that is why our cities now look like open-air asylums. The cops (attendants) herd the kooks around the city blocks like vast wards. There is absolutely no difference anymore between living outside a hospital and in one. I do not know what to write to restore your equilibrium other than to suggest that you in engage in physical labor (if you haven’t already).
https://fansinaflashbulb.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/life-is-mishaps-and-poetry-perhaps-one-of-the-best-minds-of-his-generation-carl-solomon/
Solomon made yet another contribution to the beat poets when Allen Ginsberg learned that he had an uncle who ran a paperback publishing company, 'Ace Books' and managed to get him to persuade his uncle to publish Burrough's first book "junkie".
Great review here: Junkie review
7. Ginsberg's Visions
In 1948 Whilst Ginsberg was still in New York he experienced was has been called an "auditory hallucination" while reading the poetry of William Blake (later referred to as his "Blake vision"). At first, Ginsberg claimed he heard the voice of God, but later interpreted the voice as that of Blake himself reading Ah! Sun-flower, The Sick Rose, and Little Girl Lost, also described by Ginsberg as "voice of the ancient of days"
6. The Legacy of Artaud
His work proved to be a significant influence on the Theater of the Absurd, particularly the works of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett, and not least of all Allen Ginsberg claimed his introduction to Artaud, specifically "To Have Done with the Judgement of god", by Carl Solomon had a tremendous influence on his most famous poem "Howl".In the first section of Howl, immortalizes a few of Solomon's personal exploits, such as the line, "
...who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy."
What must have really tickled Ginsberg's imagination, Solomon's descriptions of riotous Dada events in which the public who came to watch were deliberately provoked until they reacted, sometimes violently. The more chaotic the whole event became, the more successful and Dadaist it was deemed.
Here's a Quote which describes the Utopian ideology of the Beat movement which can be taken back to the Dadaist belief that History had to be destroyed and a complete new beginning to civilization was needed . . .from Solomon's "More Mishaps", p. 9
Most poetry today is either boring, incomprehensible or both. I prefer poetry which is attempting to make some sort of philosophical point. It must be backed up by a theory, or illustrate a theory to really interest me. If it lacks a hard core of ideas, then it is merely words. The reason, I feel why poetry is made to submit to psychiatry today (and philosophy as well) is that this science offers theories and ideas while poetry (since surrealism) does not. Poets turn more and more to theories (way in or way out) of mental health since psychiatry now seems the queen of intellectual disciplines. Ours has really become a world without poetry and that is why our cities now look like open-air asylums. The cops (attendants) herd the kooks around the city blocks like vast wards. There is absolutely no difference anymore between living outside a hospital and in one. I do not know what to write to restore your equilibrium other than to suggest that you in engage in physical labor (if you haven’t already).
Solomon made yet another contribution to the beat poets when Allen Ginsberg learned that he had an uncle who ran a paperback publishing company, 'Ace Books' and managed to get him to persuade his uncle to publish Burrough's first book "junkie".Great review here: Junkie review
7. Ginsberg's Visions
What happened in that apartment? Most biographers simply add it in as a biographical anecdote and move on.
I would like to extract a bit more from this incident.
Just as a matter of interest, William Blake built an entire mystical world of poetic discourse that is virtually impossible to comprehend without spending a great deal of time and energy digging up all imagery he refers to and what their broader philosophical meanings are. This is a whole study in it itself and no doubt Ginsberg was introduced to all this at Columbia University.
But what sparks my interest was an interesting story I read in a book by Kenneth Clark called "Romantic Rebellion" in his chapter on William Blake he discusses some very strange and bizarre mystical experiences of William Blake, which I presume Ginsberg learnt about in his studies.
Blake also talks of having a visionary experience in which he met a Ghost or spirit entity which he described as the "ghost of a Flea" and even made a drawing of it. What was it he saw?
Of course biographers simply refer to Blake's rich imagination. But the recorder of these events was a friend of Blake, John Varley who was actually present and had held a strong belief in the existence of spirits. He felt frustrated by his inability to see them and thus he was drawn to Blake, who claimed to have seen visions daily since when as a small child. For example he described, to Varley, how he had seen a tree "filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars."
The two would often gather late at night in Varley's house where Varley would attempt to summon the spirit of a historical or mythological person. On the appearance of the spirit, Blake would then attempt to sketch their likeness.
Varley records: "I felt convinced by his mode of proceeding, that he had a real image before him, for he left off, and began on another part of the paper, to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch, till he had closed it. While drawing the spirit it told the artist that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of men who were ‘by nature bloodthirsty to excess’. In the painting it holds a cup for blood-drinking and stares eagerly towards it. Blake’s amalgamation of man and beast suggests a human character marred by animalistic traits.
That drawing of the mouth of the flea can be visited in the Tate's collection.
8. Blake's Visions
According to Varley, the imagery of a Flea came to Blake during an 1819 séance. Varley described the scene:Blake claimed to have seen visions as well as spirit beings throughout his life. Blake's wife Catherine Sophia Boucher, believed in his ability and his visions and supported him fully to the end of his career. He taught her how to "see visions"
Blake experienced a tragedy when his brother Robert, died from tuberculosis at age 24. At the moment of Robert's death, Blake allegedly saw his spirit "ascend through the ceiling, joyously", The following year, Blake claimed Robert appeared to him in a vision and showed him a new kind of printing process.There doesn't seem to be any evidence of Blake taking any kind of hallucinogenic which may have caused or enhanced his consciousness. So it remains within the realms of the reader to speculate on what exactly these consisted of.
An observation could be that these were central to his whole system of philosophy and he definitely experienced something from which all his poetry and artwork were inspired.
Blake also claimed he had indeed seen a ghost three decades earlier, "Blake, for the only time in his life, saw a ghost... Standing one evening at his garden-door in Lambeth, and chancing to look up, he saw a horrible grim figure, 'scaly, speckled, very awful,' stalking downstairs towards him. More frightened than ever before or after, he took to his heels, and ran out of the house."
Now Blake, in his poetry gave human form to such abstractions as time, death, plague and famine. It is with this in mind many commentators interpret this event as Blake's use of the idea of a flea as purely metaphorical. But Blake certainly made a distinction between these poetic anthropomorphisms and what he described as invisible sitters he could see, including a number of angels, Voltaire, Moses and our friend, the Flea.
As for Varley, he felt quite convinced that Blake had some kind of connection to the spirit realm.
10. Ginsberg and Moloch
Ginsberg said he did not take any hallucinogenic substances in this experience. In fact he describes with his usual candor how later on deliberately took drugs in an attempt to recapture it, Ginsberg's bibliographer and archivist Bill Morgan spoke of a peyote vision he had, possibly after trip to Mexico whilst already living in San Francisco.
It was the first time Ginsberg had used peyote, he had the terrifying experience of seeing the façade of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in the San Francisco fog as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon.
The man devouring mechanical beast, Moloch, from Fritz Lang's Metropolis
Afterwards he took notes on his vision, and these became the basis for Part II of the poem in which he describes a mechanical monster called Moloch reminiscent of the monstrous robot in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
I would like to extract a bit more from this incident.
Just as a matter of interest, William Blake built an entire mystical world of poetic discourse that is virtually impossible to comprehend without spending a great deal of time and energy digging up all imagery he refers to and what their broader philosophical meanings are. This is a whole study in it itself and no doubt Ginsberg was introduced to all this at Columbia University.
But what sparks my interest was an interesting story I read in a book by Kenneth Clark called "Romantic Rebellion" in his chapter on William Blake he discusses some very strange and bizarre mystical experiences of William Blake, which I presume Ginsberg learnt about in his studies.
Blake also talks of having a visionary experience in which he met a Ghost or spirit entity which he described as the "ghost of a Flea" and even made a drawing of it. What was it he saw?
The two would often gather late at night in Varley's house where Varley would attempt to summon the spirit of a historical or mythological person. On the appearance of the spirit, Blake would then attempt to sketch their likeness.
Varley records: "I felt convinced by his mode of proceeding, that he had a real image before him, for he left off, and began on another part of the paper, to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch, till he had closed it. While drawing the spirit it told the artist that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of men who were ‘by nature bloodthirsty to excess’. In the painting it holds a cup for blood-drinking and stares eagerly towards it. Blake’s amalgamation of man and beast suggests a human character marred by animalistic traits.
That drawing of the mouth of the flea can be visited in the Tate's collection.
8. Blake's Visions
According to Varley, the imagery of a Flea came to Blake during an 1819 séance. Varley described the scene:Blake claimed to have seen visions as well as spirit beings throughout his life. Blake's wife Catherine Sophia Boucher, believed in his ability and his visions and supported him fully to the end of his career. He taught her how to "see visions"
Blake experienced a tragedy when his brother Robert, died from tuberculosis at age 24. At the moment of Robert's death, Blake allegedly saw his spirit "ascend through the ceiling, joyously", The following year, Blake claimed Robert appeared to him in a vision and showed him a new kind of printing process.There doesn't seem to be any evidence of Blake taking any kind of hallucinogenic which may have caused or enhanced his consciousness. So it remains within the realms of the reader to speculate on what exactly these consisted of.
An observation could be that these were central to his whole system of philosophy and he definitely experienced something from which all his poetry and artwork were inspired.
Blake also claimed he had indeed seen a ghost three decades earlier, "Blake, for the only time in his life, saw a ghost... Standing one evening at his garden-door in Lambeth, and chancing to look up, he saw a horrible grim figure, 'scaly, speckled, very awful,' stalking downstairs towards him. More frightened than ever before or after, he took to his heels, and ran out of the house."
As for Varley, he felt quite convinced that Blake had some kind of connection to the spirit realm.
10. Ginsberg and Moloch
Ginsberg said he did not take any hallucinogenic substances in this experience. In fact he describes with his usual candor how later on deliberately took drugs in an attempt to recapture it, Ginsberg's bibliographer and archivist Bill Morgan spoke of a peyote vision he had, possibly after trip to Mexico whilst already living in San Francisco.
It was the first time Ginsberg had used peyote, he had the terrifying experience of seeing the façade of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in the San Francisco fog as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon.
It was the first time Ginsberg had used peyote, he had the terrifying experience of seeing the façade of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in the San Francisco fog as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon.
|
| The man devouring mechanical beast, Moloch, from Fritz Lang's Metropolis |
Afterwards he took notes on his vision, and these became the basis for Part II of the poem in which he describes a mechanical monster called Moloch reminiscent of the monstrous robot in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
10. If your going to San Francisco
Whatever happened in that strange experience in New York was definitely a defining event in Ginsberg's life and his search for a "totally deeper real universe". Up until this time Ginsberg had never written anything as fresh or as radical as "Howl". He worked as a market researcher and book reviewer, and his poetry was similar to the writers and poets he had studied. But from this time on, his vision was uppermost in his mind and eventually he left New York to head off to Cuba to investigate Castro's communism and then to Mexico to try out various Hallucinogens, deliberately in order to recapture his visionary experience. Deciding to follow the object of his desires, Neal Cassady to San Francisco, it would be here where he would find writers and poets who were seeking new voices and fresh approaches further spurring him on in his personal quest.
There met Peter Orlovsky who became his homosexual partner for the rest of his life. He took a job once again in market research, thinking that he might enroll in the graduate English program at the University of California in Berkeley.
Jack Kerouac in 1955 wrote a poem entitled "Mexico city Blues" in 1955, Ginsberg decided to make his own version and he decided to take his courage and write out a poem that had been formulating in his mind for some time , upon completion he dedicated it to Carl Solomon. He then needed a publisher, and soon found one in the form of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
11. Ferlinghetti and city lights press.
Ferlinghetti was the child of immigrants who settled in San Francisco at the end of the war. There he opened a Bookstore called City Lights. There already was in San Francisco a growing hub of progressives who wanted to revolutionize poetry writing, this group would become the hub of the innovative Beat literature.
Ferlinghetti was also a progressive writer whose own poetry displayed a jazz-inspired rhythm and improvisational spirit that linked him to the aims and focus of the Beat poets. Also like them he wanted to speak against the decadence and prudishness of American culture, and the destructive potential of capitalism gone awry.
From left, Bob Donlon, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti stand outside Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in 1956.https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/the-beat-generation/?utm_term=.073eb688c8a8
Ginsberg first read his poem "Howl" to an appreciative and enthusiastic audience at the "Six" gallery in San Francisco. It hit a nerve. . .
Ginsberg at the six Gallery
Journalists were quick to herald the reading as a landmark event in American poetry, the birth of what they labeled the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran the City Lights Bookstore and the City Lights publishing house in North Beach, sent Ginsberg a telegram echoing Ralph Waldo Emerson's response to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?" Later Ginsberg wrote that "in publishing 'Howl,' I was curious to leave behind after my generation an emotional time bomb that would continue exploding in U.S. consciousness in case our military-industrial-nationalist complex solidified into a repressive police bureaucracy"* (Original Draft Facsimile Howl, p. xii).
* How about that for a prophetic utterance!!!
Early in the following year Howl and Other Poems was published with an introduction by William Carlos Williams as number four in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series. In May 1956 copies of the small black-and-white stapled paperback were seized by the San Francisco police, who arrested Ferlinghetti and Shigeyoshi Murao, his shop manager, and charged them with publishing and selling an obscene and indecent book.
The American Civil Liberties Union took up the defense of Ginsberg's poem in a highly publicized obscenity trial in San Francisco, which concluded in October 1957 when Judge Clayton Horn ruled that Howl had "redeeming social value".
11. Ferlinghetti and city lights press.
Ferlinghetti was the child of immigrants who settled in San Francisco at the end of the war. There he opened a Bookstore called City Lights. There already was in San Francisco a growing hub of progressives who wanted to revolutionize poetry writing, this group would become the hub of the innovative Beat literature.
Ferlinghetti was also a progressive writer whose own poetry displayed a jazz-inspired rhythm and improvisational spirit that linked him to the aims and focus of the Beat poets. Also like them he wanted to speak against the decadence and prudishness of American culture, and the destructive potential of capitalism gone awry.
 |
| From left, Bob Donlon, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti stand outside Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in 1956.https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/the-beat-generation/?utm_term=.073eb688c8a8 |
 |
| Ginsberg at the six Gallery |
* How about that for a prophetic utterance!!!
The American Civil Liberties Union took up the defense of Ginsberg's poem in a highly publicized obscenity trial in San Francisco, which concluded in October 1957 when Judge Clayton Horn ruled that Howl had "redeeming social value".
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